Shiny Sauce Bike Cleaner Review

Shiny Sauce Bike Cleaner Review

Simon Tuck

Shiny Sauce is a bike cleaner. It comes in a spray bottle. Developed over nearly a decade of cleaning dirty motorbikes, it’s now being marketed for use on bicycles too.

I’ve known Nooj for quite a few years now. Otherwise known as Nigel, the man behind Shiny Bike Syndrome and Shiny Sauce, Nooj has spent a lot of time scrubbing dirt off of motorbikes and making them look super shiny.

In the course of starting up his ‘Shiny Bike Syndrome’ business, Nooj needed a cleaning product that would make his life as easy as possible, so he researched and formulated his own magic recipe. This product needed to be safe to use on performance motorbikes and their various materials and finishes. High gloss, matt, carbon fibre, aluminium, rubber seals and tyres, brake discs and pads are all safe to spray on whether you own a motorbike or a bicycle. You are advised to wash your bike out of direct sunlight and not to let the product dry for the best results (and this is quite a standard bit of advice for cleaning products in general including the Crankalicious wax I tried recently).

This is Nooj and his Shiny Sauce with my Aprilia RSV back in 2012

My first look at what Shiny Sauce can do came in 2012, when I let Nooj loose on my custom Aprilia RSV. I’m quite obsessive with my cleaning and I was surprised at the amount of dirt that came off that bike when the Shiny Sauce was applied. It had a brushed aluminium frame and a fair bit of carbon fibre as well as an aftermarket paint job. The Shiny Sauce did no harm. Although the brake discs look a bit orange in the photo, once they’d been cleaned and rinsed they were back to being very shiny. When I was offered a bottle of his special formula to try it out on my bicycles I jumped at the chance.

Following a bit of unintended green laning in deepest, darkest Arundel. My ‘town’ bike needed a bit of attention, so I armed my spray gun and set to work with the Shiny Sauce.

I took the wheels off to clean them separately, but there’s no need to because Shiny Sauce is safe to use on rubber and braking surfaces. After wetting the frame I used a toothbrush because I didn’t have anything bigger. Ideally you need a slightly bigger, fairly soft brush. Such brushes are readily available, but I wasn’t that worried about the paint finish on this old bike. If you’re used to other branded bike cleaners you might be surprised that the Shiny Sauce doesn’t have an artificial fruity smell, but you can’t clean your bike with a smell. I didn’t need to scrub very hard, all the dirt came off pretty easily. What did surprise me was how shiny the cranks came up.

I did worry a little when the bike dried and the paint on the forks had a bit of a film over it. I’m not sure if I hadn’t rinsed off with warm enough water (it was only 2 degrees outside), or I’d let the cleaner dry. All it took was a wipe over with a soft cloth and some polish and it was fine.

Having used a few different cleaning products lately, the Shiny Sauce definitely has a place in my arsenal. It’s a direct cleaner, you spray it on rather than diluting it in a bucket, so it’s good for spot cleaning. Shiny Sauce is also handy if you haven’t got hot water nearby to fill your bucket up. All you need is the Sauce, a soft brush, and a hose. Little effort is needed, and it even cleaned the chain without much scrubbing.